Partially lost in the glittery, awkward, beefy brilliant mess that was the VMAs – Kanye’s bizarre speech, Nicki Minaj calling the host a bitch, so, so many terrible outfit changes – was the announcement that the host Miley had just dropped a surprise album titled Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, made in collaboration with The Flaming Lips. You can listen to it for free here.

It’s strange, DIY stoner pop. For a better indicator of what it sounds like, watch this homemade video for the song "Dooo It!" released in conjunction with the album, featuring a close up of her rubbing glitter, sprinkles and gels on her face and tongue in between smoking a massive joint. 

There’s a reason it sounds the way it does, besides the ritual of getting stoned. An interview in the The New York Times maps out the unconventional route that led her to the album’s creation.

It all started with the passing of her beloved dog, Floyd, who was killed by coyotes while the singer was on tour for Bangerz. “Two weeks later, after bawling through some performances, Ms. Cyrus was hospitalized for more than a week in Kansas with a severe allergic reaction to antibiotics,” the paper writes. “There she was visited by Mr. Coyne, 54, long one of her musical heroes, with whom she’d recently begun collaborating.” 

But it was after she returned home from the hospital and started looking into natural healing, things got, as she puts it, “really trippy”. A Chinese healer “sent me into a state where my dog was lifted out of my lungs and placed on my shoulder,” Cyrus explained. “I pet my dog for like three hours” and after eventually telling Floyd she had to “let go and put his energy out” she believes something happened. “I really, think, in a way, his energy went into Wayne’s energy. What he was to me, Wayne has become.”

Although she’s likening the Flaming Lips singer to her dead dog, what she really means is he’s creatively vital. Recently they’ve been completely inseparable. He’s her mentor and even something of a muse to her, although as she states in the interview, there’s absolutely nothing sexual about their relationship.

Some people just nail a new drinks or go for a run to get the creative juices flowing. But then the clear-cut route wouldn't have made an album called Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz.